Gary Gygax passed away yesterday at his home in Lake Geneva (near Milwaukee, Wisconsin) aged 69. Gygax was the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, which arguably popularized role playing games.
He will be sadly missed.
Kill Software Patents
http://www.killsoftwarepatents.com/
Pieter Hintjens new website on Software Patents launched during his talk at FOSDEM. Actually still being edited, live during the talk now.
FOSDEM geek-fest
Sitting here at FOSDEM, nursing a slight hangover from lots of Belgian beer last night at the Delerium Cafe in Brussels. they reputedly have over 2000 beers on the menu, but that’s still not enough for every one of the 4000+ geeks here to have a different one each!
It’s already been an interesting weekend, and it’s not lunchtime yet on Saturday.
The talk on How a Large-Scale Open Source Project Works is about to begin, so I’ll post this, and update later.
Thanks to everyone
It’s been a very trying and tiring day, going to work at 8:00 and just getting in at 21:10.
I’ve been seeting up today for the Shropshire skills fair in Telford, taking out the newly christened “Aberystwyth Field Robotics Group” for an exhibition. Mark, Fred and myself have spent the afternoon setting up for the lots of visiting school children in the next two days.
It was very nice to get home and find so many messages of congratulations on my facebook wall, it helps a little towards easing having to be driving to Telford at 06:00 for the next two days.
I’m just really looking forward to FOSDEM at the weekend.
Arduino I2C Wire library
I’ve spent most of the evening trying to get I2C working between the Arduino and a couple of I2C devices (a LCD output and a relay board) from Robot Electronics. I finally had to look at the source code for the Wire library that implements the TwoWire serial protocol for the Arduino, and found that the library correctly bit shifts the address one bit towards the MSB, but that means that you have to do the reverse bit shift to quote the address on the bus when making the library calls. It all has to do with the fact that it’s a 7 bit addressing system.
I did finally manage to get it to work by dividing all the addreses by two, so that’ll make it easier when I actually get the 6-7.2V supply working for the servo board for controlling the turnouts on the layout.
Bedtime now.
Arduino model railway control
I’ve been playing with a couple of Arduinos for the last week, and doing some physical computing, interfacing with real devices from the microcontroller. It’s been interesting doing some low level electronics again, and it was a great feeling about half an hour ago to have the model railway running under computer control – using the laptop to send commands over the USB port to the Arduino, which then does PWM to control the speed of the train.
There were a few hiccups along the way – not least of which the Arduino crashed repeatedly when the train started moving – it appears that the power pack I was using didn’t like having its load being PWMed, causing voltage problems. I resorted to running the Arduino off the USB supply, disconnecting the common 12V power input to the board, and just using that external power pack to provide power for the direction change relay and output to the loco. Make sure that you keep the ground connected though, as the Darlington TIP120s need that to be common in order to work.
The eventual use for this project is to automate the model layout in the Corris Railway Museum, and allow visitors to put coins in a slot and the train will then run for a number of returns depending on the coin put in. More coins – the train runs a little quicker. The software allows for reed switches at either end of the line for reversing, as well as reed switches for stations.
The hardware driver circuit is shown here in the schematic below (I know it’s pretty rough, but it’s as good as I can do at short notice), and photo of the really dodgy looking breadboard prototype.
The diodes are 1N4004s and the caps are 0.1μF to protect against reverse current from the inductive loads.
Computer Errors – in Haiku
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
Everything is gone;
Your life’s work has been destroyed.
Squeeze trigger (yes/no)?
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
Seeing my great fault
Through darkening blue windows
I begin again
The code was willing,
It considered your request,
But the chips were weak.
Printer not ready.
Could be a fatal error.
Have a pen handy?
A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
Errors have occurred.
We won’t tell you where or why.
Lazy programmers.
Server’s poor response
Not quick enough for browser.
Timed out, plum blossom.
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
Login incorrect.
Only perfect spellers may
enter this system.
This site has been moved.
We’d tell you where, but then we’d
have to delete you.
Wind catches lily
Scatt’ring petals to the wind:
Segmentation fault
ABORTED effort:
Close all that you have.
You ask way too much.
First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.
With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence:
“My Novel” not found.
The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao, until
You bring fresh toner.
The Web site you seek
cannot be located but
endless others exist
Stay the patient course
Of little worth is your ire
The network is down
A crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.
There is a chasm
of carbon and silicon
the software can’t bridge
Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working
Windows is like that
To have no errors
Would be life without meaning
No struggle, no joy
You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
No keyboard present
Hit F1 to continue
Zen engineering?
Hal, open the file
Hal, open the damn file, Hal
open the, please Hal
Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.
Having been erased,
The document you’re seeking
Must now be retyped.
The ten thousand things
How long do any persist?
Netscape, too, has gone.
Rather than a beep
Or a rude error message,
These words: “File not found.”
Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
Program aborting:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.
Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
Chip and pin just as fallible as old system?
A Guardian article about how chip and pin is not really any more secure than the old system, and the only change is that banks are now not paying claims, instead blaming the card owner for giving their cards and pins out. Their argument – you can’t copy these chips!
The article raises some important security concerns. Also, do you believe that reported card crime is down, now that you don’t report it to the police, the bank does that for you after they decide if it’s worth reporting?
And rather than make another post, I just have to link to this article about airport and airline security, and how completely absurd the whole thing is.
Personally, I fell that they’ve already won, by getting us to allow our government to take away civil liberties, whilst most of the voting public either encourage it, or just lay down and take it.
One of the comments near the top of the page, made by a pilot who is also subject to these security checks puts it quite succinctly:
Let’s think about something. I am in my pilot uniform and going through security and about to fly an aircraft and passengers from point A to B. I and my co-pilot will be sealed in the cockpit in front of a security door that cannot be opened from the outside. I will have in my hands the only “lethal” weapon used on 9/11, – the control yoke. So just what is it the TSA is checking me for? A gun? A knife? What? If I had been recuited by ‘the bad guys’ do I need to carry ANYTHING lethal? Of course not! Therefore, I should not have to go through security at all!
Unemployable?
Brilliant comic again from The Joy of Tech. Mind what you post 😉
Oolite
I’ve just discovered Oolite, although I seem to remember it from a year or two ago, but not having the time to play with it.
I downloaded it again yesterday, and I have to say that I’m quite impressed by the openness of the system, and I have only suffered a couple of software crashes – I crashed into other ships and space stations more than I’ve lost the game when it bombed out.
It brings back memories of 8 bit gaming, and most of my Elite playing was on a friends BBC model B so I never got very far, but I did play Frontier: Elite II on my Amiga 1200 an awful lot.
I don’t anticipate being anything more than Mostly Harmless for a while yet, but I am looking forward to being able to afford to buy a Falcon or even design myself a ship or two for the community.
If you were a fan, then download it if you’ve the time to spare wending your way across the space lanes, trading, pirating, bounty hunting, mining, or whatever your preferred profession in space.